Mizuho Bank President and CEO Koji Fujiwara apologized Monday for a computer system failure that left many of the bank's customers unable to withdraw cash from Mizuho's ATMs.
"We were not able to respond to our customers promptly and many of them were kept waiting for a long time. I deeply apologize," Fujiwara said at a press conference held in Tokyo.
The bank will promptly return customers' cash cards and bankbooks that could not be retrieved from ATMs as well as cover fees paid by those who were forced to make withdrawals from other banks, Fujiwara said.
According to the bank, the reason behind the Sunday crash was two fold. A regularly scheduled system update for fixed deposit accounts was carried out at the same time as a system management process performed on an irregular business related to fixed deposit accounts that had no transactions for a long period of time. The amount of data that was moving through Mizuho's systems at that time exceeded its processing capabilities, causing a crash.
The system error was fully restored at 3 p.m. on Monday after 4,318, or about 80% of Mizuho ATMs, were temporarily shut down. There were 5,244 cases in which ATMs did not return inserted cash cards and bankbooks to customers.
While the bank had its branch staff on duty to deal with the situation at their branches, many customers were left waiting for long periods of time.
"We should've requested all branches' staff to be on duty a little earlier," Fujiwara said.
Mizuho Bank faced severe criticism for massive system failures in 2002 and 2011, and completely switched to a new system in 2019 to prevent a reoccurrence.
The Financial Services Agency will issue a report request order to Mizuho Bank under the Banking Law and ask for a detailed report on the causes behind the system failure.
"After giving priority to addressing our customers, we will investigate the cause and launch measures to prevent a reoccurrence," Fujiwara said. "Of course as part of top management, we bear responsibility."
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